Decades Of Missing Indigenous Women A 'Canadian Genocide' - Leaked Report

[appalachiablue]

Source: The Guardian

Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a “Canadian genocide”, a leaked landmark government report has concluded.

The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more than two and a half years. Canada’s CBC News was given a copy of the report, which is due to be released on Monday, on Friday. Its contents were confirmed to the Guardian by an individual working within the inquiry.

The report, by the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, determined that “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies” were a key driving force in the disappearance of thousands of Indigenous women.

“We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) people have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date,” said the report. While the number of Indigenous women who have gone missing is estimated to exceed 4,000, the report admits that no firm numbers can ever be established. -MORE...

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/canada-missing-indigenous-women-cultural-genocide-government-report

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Activists and Indigenous peoples have pushed for years for an official inquiry into the high number of Indigenous women who have either gone missing or been killed. This is also not the first time a government report has invoked accusations of genocide in Canada.

Sen. Murray Sinclair, who led the Truth and Reconciliation commission, experienced in 2015 serious backlash when he called the school policy of incarcerating thousands of Indigenous children in residential schools “cultural genocide”—a characterisation supported by the former chief justice of the supreme court.



Indigenous women have been disappearing for generations. Politicians are starting to notice (The Intercept).

[RainCaster]

1. That's a big ass acronym!

I don't mean to make light of this report, or the people described by this lengthy acronym. Really. What little is available at the Guardian article is pretty bad stuff. I hope they publish more this weekend.

I'm new to this part of it - what is a 2 spirit? All the rest I get, it's part of gender and sexual identity. But two spirit?

[appalachiablue]

2. FYI, The article states that the full report will come out Monday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48442934

[stopdiggin]

3. 2 spirit covers a range (here's what I found)

It's an umbrella term. Also (from what I understand) specific to indigenous individuals and community.

“Two-spirit” refers to a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, and is used by some Indigenous people to describe their sexual, gender and/or spiritual identity. As an umbrella term it may encompass same-sex attraction and a wide variety of gender variance, including people who might be described in Western culture as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, gender queer, cross-dressers or who have multiple gender identities. Two-spirit can also include relationships that could be considered poly. The creation of the term “two-spirit” is attributed to Albert McLeod, who proposed its use during the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference, held in Winnipeg in 1990. The term is a translation of the Anishinaabemowin term niizh manidoowag, two spirits.

[PatSeg]

5. That jumped out at me as well

I wonder how long these acronyms are going to get, seems to defeat the purpose of an acronym.

[DownriverDem]

4. This saddens me

I am of French Canadian/Metis decent. Metis means part European man and part indigenous woman. We go back to the 1700s before Canada became a country.

[appalachiablue]

13. It's very upseting, and the same problems are happening in the US, Washington

state according to the *CNN article posted below. ~ I've never heard of 'metis' but it reminded me of 'mestizo' the word used in South America for mixed indigenous and European heritage we were told about in Peru. The people we saw wore white hats to indicate 'mestizo.' Both terms are from the same origin. Although I have no evidence, I'm sure my ancestry is indigenous Algonquian from the Mid Atlantic US.

- Wiki, metis: In Latin America, a similar word is mestizo in Spanish-speaking countries, and in Portuguese-speaking countries, mestiço is also used. The English word mestee is a corruption of the Middle French mestis (the letters 's' both pronounced at the start of the Middle French period, and both silent at the end of the Middle French period).

It has also been used to refer to people of mixed race born generally to indigenous women and French men in New France. The Métis in Canada married within their own group, and over time, created a distinct culture and ethnicity of their own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis

[Hotler]

6. WTF! ............. nt

[Farmer-Rick]

7. I've heard of this before

About a year ago one of my favorite van life travelers in Canada talked about these missing women on her You Tube channel. Then she was immediately attacked by a bunch of male misogynists claiming she was exaggerating. Someone wants to keep this quiet.

I really want to read that report. Releasing it is a first step.

I really like how they refer to 2SLGBTQQIA people. It's as simple as two spirits. Easier to say and remember too.

[OnlinePoker]

12. What I find disheartening about this report is it only focused on indigenous women

In Canada, between 1980 and 2012 (the last numbers I could find), more than twice as many indigenous men were murdered as women. At the time the commission was called, the RCMP said they had around 100 missing indigenous women's cases, but declined to give numbers for men. In total, over 2500 indigenous people were murdered in that 32 year period I gave.

[Bayard]

8. The same thing is happening in the U.S.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/09/us/native-american-murdered-missing-women/index.html

[appalachiablue]

9. Thanks, awful, same thing in Washington state & US- swept under the rug,

[Blue_Tires]

10. I was about to post that, too...

[inanna]

14. Oh no.....

From the link you posted it says:

>> "One estimate from the National Crime Information Center shows 5,712 reports of missing Native American women in 2016 alone." <<

I had to read that three times to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me.

I did not know this was also happening in the US as well.

Thanks for the link.

[roamer65]

11. Canada will face up to it.

The US will try to lie about and bury it.

[inanna]

15. A documentary on this...

It's also happening in Australia.

Canada and Australia share a dark secret: in recent decades thousands of Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing. What can Australia learn from Canada’s attempts to address the problem?

[appalachiablue]

16. (US) Why do so many Native Amer. women go missing? Congress to find out.

(CNN) April 9, 2019— Moments after Alyssa McLemore called 911 and asked for help on April 9, 2009, the line went dead. Authorities were unable to trace the exact call location and never reached her. Police in the Seattle suburb of Kent showed up at the 21-year-old's door to see if she was there. She wasn't. Days later McLemore missed her own mother's funeral, and she's missed every family gathering since. McLemore, who would be 31 today, is one of the thousands of Native American women who go missing or are victims of violence every year, both on reservations and in cities.

It is a problem so pervasive that, in some places, Native American women are more than 10 times more likely than the rest of the population to be murdered, according to a Department of Justice-funded study by researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

That stunning statistic is more than a decade old, but the issue of missing and murdered women is much older than that. One estimate from the National Crime Information Center shows 5,712 reports of missing Native American women in 2016 alone -- yet reliable, comprehensive data on the problem is still almost impossible to come by. More...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/09/us/native-american-murdered-missing-women/index.html

[iluvtennis]

17. Wow. I just listened to a podcast the other day on one of these murders from the 70's...

...it took over 20 years for the case to be solved.

Her name was Helen Betty Osborne and she was abducted, raped, and beat to death by 4 Caucasian guys out for some "fun" after a long night of drinking. The story was heartbreaking - Betty was a 19 year old student who was studying to be a teacher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Betty_Osborne

[ck4829]

18. K&R for visibility